Relating to A National Emergency Declared By the President on March 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. The one would be the First Amendment to the Constitution. Speech is protected, whether you like it or not. The second reason would be that the Constitution actually prohibits bills of attainder. You are not allowed to have a specific bill against a person or a company. So this fails on two egregious points, pretty obvious points. I think we ought to think about that.

I think we should be aware of those who peddle fear. I think we should be aware of those who use fear to coax Americans to relinquish our liberties, to regulate and limit our First Amendment rights.

Every accusation of data-gathering that has been attributed to TikTok could also be attributed to domestic big tech companies. In fact, one of the bills they are looking at doing is broad enough that the President will be given the power to designate whatever country he sees fit to be an adversary and whatever company underneath that definition. It would basically be a limitless authority for the President to ban speech.

If Republicans want to continuously lose elections for a generation, they should pass this bill to ban TikTok, a social media app used by 150 million people, primarily young Americans. This brilliant strategy comes while polls indicate that 71 percent of young women and 53 percent of young men voted for a Democrat candidate for Congress.

Admittedly, many Democrats have joined Republicans in calling for this ban, but, like most issues, the blame will stick to Republicans more.

The Republican strategy to ban TikTok comes simultaneously with GOP complaints of domestic social media companies canceling and censoring conservatives. Without a hint of irony, many of these same conservatives now rail against censorship while advocating for censorship against social media apps they worry are influenced by the Chinese.

Before banning TikTok, these censors might want to discover that China already bans TikTok. Do we really want to emulate Chinese speech bans? Aren't we the ones who say it is wrong for China to ban speech? So we are going to be just like China and ban speech we are afraid of?

The vice president of FreedomWorks, John Tamny, perhaps described this situation best:

Nauseating Harassment of TikTok Presumes Americans Will Be Saved From Chinese Authoritarianism If U.S. Politicians Act Like Chinese Authoritarians.

We are going to be saved from speech if we ban it in our country. My goodness. Could we think of anything more antithetical to the freedom of speech?

Go to the app. They say the app is full of propaganda, and your young people will be dancing into communism. Go to the app and search for Falun Gong, the anti-communist religious sect that is persecuted in China. Go to TikTok and search for videos advocating Taiwan's independence; criticism of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Videos are all over TikTok that are critical of official Chinese positions. That is why TikTok is banned in China. Do we want to follow China's lead in banning speech?

We should not let fear of communism cause us to ignore our First Amendment protections of free speech.

This legislation violates not only the First Amendment rights of those who own TikTok--many of whom are actually Americans, not Chinese--but it also violates the First Amendment rights of the millions of young Americans who use this social media app.

I ask the American people: Do you want Joe Biden to be your censor? Do you want to give unlimited power to any President, regardless of party, to decide who is our adversary and which countries and then which companies? There is not even a list of what percentage. What if the Chinese own 1 percent of a company or 10 percent of a company?

One of the bills before us would allow the Department of Commerce to decide--there are five countries they list that are adversaries; these are big countries that have a lot of interactions with our country already--decide which country in addition to the five.

The Department of Commerce can designate a country as an adversary, but then they can designate a company. But there are no specifics. Do the new people who are designated to be an adversary have to own 100 percent of the company? 50 percent of the company? 1 percent of the company?

This is a crazy gift of power to one person. I don't care which party they are in; it is a huge mistake.

Doctors Mueller and Farhat of Georgia Tech write:

If nationalist fears about Chinese influence operations lead to a departure from American constitutional principles supporting free and open political discourse, we will have succeeded in undermining our system of government more effectively than any Chinese propaganda.

Throughout the 20th century, millions of people were fed communist propaganda every day for their entire lives. When the regimes collapsed, the people celebrated. They danced on the Berlin Wall and on the grave of communism.

Have faith. Have faith that Americans are smart enough to hear bad ideas and reject those ideas. Have faith that our desire for freedom is strong enough to survive a few dance videos. Have some faith in freedom.

We don't ban things that are unpopular in the United States. Our Constitution even allows a Communist Party.

The previous speaker said, and I quote, ``There is no . . . First Amendment carve-out for communists.'' Well, actually, there is. In our society, you can be a communist. I don't advocate it. I think it is a terrible idea, and almost no Americans choose it. But there is a Communist Party here. We actually had a former CIA Director who said he voted for the Communist candidate in 1976--someone I don't advise you appoint to be the head of your CIA. But this is a free country. You can actually have terrible ideas, and you can broadcast them. That is what freedom of speech is about. It is not about saying: You know, I love Mother Teresa. It is not about saying things uncontroversial. It is about the ability to say things that people don't like.

Have some faith in freedom.

Our Constitution does protect even despicable speech, even the Communist Party. It operates today. Nobody wants to join the Communist Party, but you still can if you wish. America is a country that celebrates free expression, that cherishes free association, that is confident in the cause of liberty.

If you want to address the evils of Big Tech, it is not the Chinese Government you have to fear but your own. In June 2021, Newsweek reported that Big Tech complied with 85 percent of government requests to hand over your personal data. So you are worried about the Chinese Government? Your government has all of your data, and they are sucking it up from all of Big Tech. So the thing is, is your next step to ban Big Tech in our country?

There are some people who are promoting banning TikTok, and their next step is Facebook. This is on both sides of the aisle. This contagion is infecting the whole country--both parties.

Realize that this means--with 85 percent of government requests to Big Tech being honored, this means that Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, once presented with a subpoena or a warrant, routinely hand over the contents of emails, text messages, photos, documents, calendars, contact lists, and more to your government. Big Tech puts up virtually no legal fight to protect your privacy. They could go to court to stop this. Instead, there is a big cable that runs from Big Tech to the government, and they snoop on every bit of our information. If you want to protect privacy, why don't we start by protecting our own privacy in this country?

To those who are worried that the Chinese Government might somehow now have access to millions of American teenagers' information, realize that all social media sucks up personal data that people voluntarily provide. If you are going to ban TikTok, what is next?

Arguably, several domestic apps censor conservatives more than TikTok. I know this because I have been censored and I have been banned. I have had speeches on the Senate floor that are protected by the Constitution banned and kicked off of YouTube. I despise these people, but I am not going to vote to ban them because I realize that intellectually, in a free country, I don't have the right to tell the New York Times to publish my op-ed or YouTube to publish my speech. I don't like what they do.

Quit using them. That is what happens in a free country. If you don't like TikTok, quit using them. But don't disenfranchise 150 million Americans who are using a social media app and just say it is no big deal. This is the First Amendment right of 150 million Americans.

I have a host of complaints about domestic social media platforms. They cancel conservatives. But I am not in favor of banning one of them or regulating their speech or telling them who can post and who can't post. That is what the First Amendment is about. If you don't like TikTok or Facebook or YouTube, don't use them, but don't think that any interpretation of the Constitution gives you the right to ban them.

TikTok's mission appears to be like most other companies: to make money and lots of it. TikTok is actually cooperating with our government. There is something called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States--CFIUS--and TikTok has agreed to put all their data in Oracle's Cloud, and they have agreed to work with the U.S. Government. Because they so much want to make money, they will do anything to try to get rid of this accusation that they are somehow part of the Communist Party, which is not true. It is a company that is owned--probably the majority of it--by Americans and Europeans and other Asians outside of China. Less than 50 percent of it is owned by any Chinese. There is no Chinese Government of the American TikTok.

Even that being said, they are willing to put all of it under the Oracle Cloud. They are willing to have U.S. regulators be given access to it, all because they want to continue to make money. They don't want to be shut down by the censors.

The First Amendment isn't necessary to protect speech that everybody accepts. The First Amendment exists to protect speech that might be unpopular or might be controversial.

U.S. courts have already struck down the Trump ban on TikTok. It amazes me now that the other side that was so horrified by the idea of President Trump banning something has now jumped on board to ban it themselves.

I hope saner minds will reflect on which is more dangerous: videos of teenagers dancing or the precedent of the U.S. Government banning speech. For me, it is an easy answer. I will defend the Bill of Rights against all comers--even, if need be, from members of my own party.
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Mr. PAUL. I am unlikely to take First Amendment advice from someone who believes that the First Amendment doesn't protect the Communist Party. You will find no greater foe of Communism, no greater critic. I have been a longstanding critic of, really, the funding of research in Wuhan that led to the virus. And yet I still want to protect the basic Bill of Rights, the First Amendment that protects speech, whether we like it or not. And if someone doesn't understand that Communism actually is included in the First Amendment, that terrible speech we object to is included under that--this is something we should be very wary of.

We should beware of people who peddle fear. We should beware of people who peddle half-truths. Almost everything that has been said about collecting data is, in all likelihood, true. All the social media companies collect data. They devise algorithms. Some of the domestic ones have psychological experiments that might horrify you to see what they have all the young kids thinking and doing and trying to get them to click on different pictures or trying to get them.

This is a marketing strategy, and they all do it. And they all want to make money, and they all want to get clicks.

The difference is this: Many people on the right--in fact, some on the left--they are horrified by Big Tech in our country; they are consistent in being horrified by the abuses of Big Tech here and also TikTok.

But look at their legislative proposals, many of them would actually ban Big Tech here as well or put it under the thumb of government or set up government agencies or panels to determine what speech would be acceptable. And if you are not putting enough conservatives on there, by golly, we are going to have a government commission that is going to determine what kind of content gets on there.

These are scary ideas. Don't succumb to fear. Don't give up our freedoms. Don't say that, oh, my goodness, we are going to ban 150 million Americans. This isn't just about the company; this is about the rights of 150 million Americans to get their content.

You are restricting what they can do, and you are restricting what they can use, all with innuendo. Everything that has been said about, oh, this is a channel and a funnel to the Chinese Government--these are all conjecture. These are all things they are saying happened. As far as the sale of the company, I don't think we should force them to sell, but I do believe, in a heartbeat, they could be sold.

They are located in the Cayman Islands. They are incorporated in the Cayman Islands, and they can be sold at any minute. I don't think we should force them to sell. The majority of the shareholders are not Chinese; the two engineers that developed it are, but to say that the algorithm has to reside in China and is in one tiny place and isn't anywhere else is a simplistic notion of the way technology works.

The company has bent over backwards to work with our government to try to set up something that would be reasonable, including more government oversight. So I, for one, will say that I will continue to defend the First Amendment. And those who believe that the First Amendment doesn't protect the speech are in the wrong, and they will find that out when the Supreme Court rules on this.

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